Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Israel planning to use cluster bombs on an attack on Lebanon

victim
A victim of a cluster bomb. Many nations have signed on to a ban that also involves destroying stockpiles of the weapons. However, neither the U.S. China, Russia, nor Israel have signed on.
* Israel has more targets for new war with Hezbollah

* Hezbollah may attack if Israel strikes Iran atomic sites

Israel would use a lot fewer cluster munitions in any future war with Hezbollah than it did in their 2006 conflict, even though it would go into southern Lebanon earlier and harder, a senior Israeli military officer said on Monday.

The disclosure confirms Israel already has detailed planning for an offensive aiming to avoid some controversial tactics used in the 34-day push against the Iranian-backed guerrillas.

Israel has not signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, whose adoption in 2008 was spurred partly by Lebanese casualties of the bomblets, some of which lay scattered and unexploded until they were accidentally detonated by civilian passersby.

"Due to a whole range of considerations -- legitimacy, our non-indifference to the treaty, effectiveness and other factors -- cluster use is expected to be reduced in combat in the rural areas," the officer told foreign journalists.

Comment: The original article title tries to imply that Israel is doing a really kind thing by 'limiting' their use of cluster bombs.


Heart - Black

Flashback Who Really Murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman? Part 1

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Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to forcibly sodomizing and then murdering an 11-year-old girl during early 2000
British Police torture least likely suspects Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr from Soham Village, while deliberately ignoring thousands of more likely suspects from nearby American Air Force bases

When British police arrested Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr [pictured left and right above] during the early hours of Saturday 17 August, on suspicion of the abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, they did so in the certain knowledge that absolutely no hard evidence existed incriminating either suspect. The reason for the rapid arrests was very simple: Just hours earlier, two small bodies had been found near the perimeter fence at USAF Lakenheath, and the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street was terrified of a massive political scandal involving American servicemen based in, or transiting through, the United Kingdom.

Shortly after the arrests, British and American media organizations demonized Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr so successfully that public attention was diverted away from Lakenheath completely, and focused instead on the young couple from Soham who had earlier willingly spoken to television crews about their concerns for the well being of the two missing 10-year-old girls. Both knew the girls reasonably well. Ian Huntley was the caretaker at their school, and Maxine Carr was a former teaching auxiliary in their class.

Millions of viewers around the world watched Ian and Maxine being interviewed by the media, and most were impressed by the openness of their statements and their genuine willingness to help if possible. Experts in non-verbal communication also noticed that Ian and Maxine's involuntary body and eye movements perfectly matched what they were saying verbally to the journalists.

In other words, both appeared to be telling the truth both verbally and non-verbally, an almost impossible feat for even a trained liar to fabricate. It is critical to note here also that both came across on television as perfectly normal, sane individuals, a reality later to be inexplicably challenged by police and psychiatrists in Cambridgeshire.

Comment: Who Really Murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman? - Part 2


USA

Frankenstorm Sandy prompts monstrous media hysteria

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Some waves, yesterday. Amid the hype, the endlessly recycled images on 24-hour news channels left the viewer unsure of how serious the crisis really was.
If you were watching CNN, you will have gone to bed wondering whether New York would still be on the map come dawn.

After watching media mass hysteria over hurricane Sandy on CNN for a chunk of the evening I went to bed on Monday night uncertain whether New York would still be with us by breakfast time. Yo, Big Apple, glad to wake up and find you very wet but still more or less in one piece.

I'm not sure about CNN's reputation being intact in our house though. I don't often watch the channel much these days, but even with Christiane Amanpour - she's a veteran war correspondent and grown-up - in charge of coverage of "the monster storm from hell", the output was completely over the top. It's the sort of occasion when the only experts being consulted sounded like the OTT variety. And, no, little or no climatic context was provided.

By comparison, BBC1's Six O'Clock News, which only devoted its first five minutes or so to something that hadn't actually happened to the US eastern seaboard yet - and didn't live up to its billing when it did, peaking a few hours later - was a model of reticence. As ever Radio 4 is both calmer and more informative. All those misleading pictures often get in the way.

I won't be back on CNN in a hurry, which is worrying - and not just for CNN either because intense competition between rival media in search of readers and viewers leads to hype and hysteria which must put off many customers. Even those in search of lurid sensation go off in search of even dafter novelty when they tire of waiting to see if CNN's intrepid reporter in storm-torn Atlantic City - his name was Ali - would be picked up by the wind and blown into the sea (or the "literal Niagra Falls" as one eyewitness called the ocean).

Comment: The context is important and the context was, as ever, entirely lacking in mainstream US media coverage. Yes, Sandy was big, but it was not 'the end of the world' in and of itself, it was just another extreme weather event joining a long list of similar events in recent years.


Boat

Iran dispatches warships to Sudan after Israeli airstrike on missile base

Iran risked Israeli military retaliation Monday with the dispatch of a naval task force to Sudan just days after a widely reported airstrike by the Jewish state against a missile base run by Tehran in Khartoum.
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© Getty Images
An airstrike was widely reported to have been carried out by Israel against a missile base run by Iran in Sudan.
Sudanese state media said that a docking ceremony was staged in Port Sudan to receive the convoy led by an Iranian naval frigate and corvette warship.

Commanders of the Iranian flotilla reportedly met Sudanese navy chiefs as a gesture of "peace and friendship".

But Israel sees the increasingly close military links between Iran and Sudan as a credible threat. It fears Iran is building missiles to supply Hizbollah and the Syrian regime.

Israeli media has said that a long-range bombing run by eight F15 bombers hit a missile base staffed by Iranian engineers at the Yarmouk military plant.

Sudan has complained to the United Nations that Israel bombed the factory.

Iran claims to have harvested images of "sensitive" Israeli military sites and other potential missile targets form a drone shot down after it was launched from Lebanon by Hizbollah

Ismael Kowsari, a Iranian MP, told the semi-official Mehr news agency that images from the drone were broadcast back to Hizbollah operators before the Israeli military shot it out of the sky earlier this month.

Vader

Blowing the roof off global corporate oligarchy

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© Mr. Fish
Sun Tzu, author of the ancient and enduring strategy treatise, The Art of War, once said:
Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downward.

So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.

Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.
Wind, similarly, finds its way into the weakest points of a roof, and no matter how strong, should it find these points, is capable of taking the entire roof off with a good gust.

Imagine increasing global awareness of the disparity and injustice purveyed by global corporate oligarchy as a storm, and imagine the roof of this oligarchy's house covered in workers trying to tack down these weakest points. Where are they?

Where do they fear the wind blowing hardest?

Dollar

A new downturn in the global economy



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There are increasing signs that the global economy is about to enter a new period of financial turbulence, coupled with deepening recession in a growing number of countries.

In the immediate aftermath of the global economic breakdown that began in 2008, set off by the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers, governments around the world took on increased debt as they made available trillions of dollars to prevent a complete collapse of the financial system. Meetings of the Group of 20 were dominated by pledges there would be no return to the conditions of the 1930s and assurances that the lessons of history had been learned.

The writings of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist of the 1930s who advocated increased government spending to counter depressions, were suddenly back in vogue. But a sharp turn came in June 2010, when a meeting of the G20 initiated a turn to austerity, emphasising the necessity to impose "fiscal consolidation." The essence of this program was to claw back the money given to the banks through massive cutbacks to government spending, especially on social services.

Stormtrooper

Police State: 'They brought in an army to take out a 16-year-old boy': Anguish of parents whose suicidal son was shot by SWAT sniper at his home

Andrew Messina
© CBS AtlantaLisa Messina (left) has spoken of her devastation at the death of her boy Andrew (right) who was shot dead by police after pulling a gun on himself at his Atlanta home

A sensitive and peace-loving 16-year-old boy from an affluent Georgia suburb was fatally gunned down by a police sniper in his own house after he threatened to kill himself following a bad day at school.

Young Andrew Messina cracked after receiving a bad grade and upon returning home he grabbed his parents .357 Magnum and told his mother he wanted to end his life.

Panicked, she called the police to come and talk him down, but instead, an army of deputies, an armoured tank and a sniper arrived at their Towne Lake home who eventually shot the boy dead after he smashed a door window with the handgun.

Question

Key witness in Polish presidential plane crash found hanged

Lech Kaczynski Tu-154 aircraft wreckage
© RIA Novosti / Oleg MineevPolish President Lech Kaczynski's Tu-154 aircraft debris
A Polish parliamentary investigation into President's Lech Kaczynski plane crash in Smolensk in 2010 is considering witness protection: A flight engineer set to deliver critical testimony was found hanged in his house in Warsaw.

­The body of Remigiusz Muś, a 42-year-old aviation engineer, was found by his wife in the cellar of their house in the suburbs of the Polish capital at around 11:30pm local time on Saturday. She called an ambulance and attempted to resuscitate her husband, but medics pronounced him dead as soon as they arrived. An autopsy is set for Monday, October 29.

As news of Muś' death hit headlines, the head of the Polish parliamentary commission looking into the crash, Antoni Macierewicz, said that Muś was one of two key witnesses in the case. With Muś dead, key witness Artur Wosztyl should be put in protective custody, Macierewicz said.

Dariusz Slepokura, a spokesperson for the Warsaw district prosecutor's office, said on Monday that Muś likely committed suicide.

Stormtrooper

Turkish police teargas thousands-strong pro-secular rally in Ankara

Tear gas and water cannons met thousands of protesters in Ankara who had staged a pro-secular rally on Republic Day. The clashes mark a growing gap between the Islam-leaning government and the country's secular layers.


"Turkey is secular and will remain secular!" chanted protesters waving Turkish flags and banners.

The capital's governor last week banned a planned pro-secular rally citing fears that "some groups may seek to incite anarchy in the country." But Monday, over 30 civil society groups, led by the Youth Union of Turkey, still took to the streets.

Rocket

Did Israel just bomb Sudan? Satellite pictures suggest Sudanese weapons factory hit by air strike

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© APThe Yarmouk military complex in Khartoum, Sudan, seen in a satellite image made on 12 October, prior to the Israeli attack.
US monitoring group says images are consistent with attack from air as Khartoum accuses Israel over Yarmouk bombing

Satellite images of the aftermath of an explosion at a Sudanese weapons factory this past week suggest the site was hit in an air strike, a US monitoring group said Saturday.

The Sudanese government has accused Israel of bombing its Yarmouk military complex in Khartoum, killing two people and leaving the factory in ruins.

The images released by the Satellite Sentinel Project to the Associated Press on Saturday showed six 52-foot wide craters near the epicenter of Wednesday's explosion at the compound.

Military experts consulted by the project found the craters to be "consistent with large impact craters created by air-delivered munitions", Satellite Sentinel Project spokesman Jonathan Hutson said.